Resistive memories make use of a memory element that can change its electrical resistance through suitable programming. Accordingly, the memory element comprises a resistive storage medium that exhibits at least two different states having different electrical resistance. One of theses states may be a high resistive state and the other may be a low resistive state. The resistive storage medium may be switched between theses states through suitable programming.
In resistive memory cells, such as conductive bridge RAM (CBRAM) memory cells, also referred to as programmable metallization cells (PMC) as well as phase change RAM (PCRAM) memory cells, or magnetic RAM (MRAM) cells, for example, the logical information may be written into a memory cell by changing the resistance of the cell. Storage of the information may be achieved by maintaining the resistance of the cell. For evaluating the content of a memory cell the resistance value of the cell may be evaluated by applying a voltage or a current to the cell, for example.